Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan
"I told him... that you poured out honor like a fountain, all around you." :"That's weird. I don't feel full of honor, or anything else, except maybe confusion." :"Naturally not. Fountains keep nothing for themselves." - Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith, Shards of Honor Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan was a citizen of Beta Colony, and an officer in the Betan Astronomical Survey. After falling in love with enemy Admiral Lord Aral Vorkosigan, she moved to Barrayar to marry him and became a Barrayaran subject. As Lady Vorkosigan, she became Regent-consort of the Barrayaran Imperium, and later Countess Vorkosigan. She was the mother of Miles Naismith Vorkosigan and his clone Mark Pierre Vorkosigan. After her husband retired from Barrayaran politics, she was appointed Vicereine of the planet Sergyar. Early years Cordelia Naismith was the daughter of Miles Mark Naismith and Elizabeth Naismith. Her father, who was in the Betan Astronomical Survey, died in a shuttleport accident. She had one brother on Beta Colony, who later married and had two children. Like her father, Cordelia pursued a career in the Astronomical Survey. Her specialty was astronavigation, and she was ambitious for ship command.Shards of Honor At age thirty,Memory the command of the ship she was on became open, but she gave up her pursuit of it to please her then-lover, a fellow officer. He left her shortly thereafter. Several years later she finally achieved the rank of commander and her own command, the Rene Magritte. It was a sixty-person survey vessel. While exploring an unknown planet, her crew was set upon by the Barrayaran military. Most of the crew escaped on their shuttle, but Naismith, Lieutenant Reg Rosemont, and Ensign Dubauer were abandoned on the planet. Naismith and Dubauer initially evaded capture and contacted her vessel, but were discovered by Barrayaran soldier Konstantin Bothari and shot at with a nerve disruptor. Both survived, although Dubauer was left with permanent brain damage. Upon waking up, Naismith was captured by the Barrayaran commander, Captain Aral Vorkosigan. Vorkosigan had been stunned in the back and abandoned by his troops as part of a mutinous plot. He took Naismith prisoner, and after an argument, Dubauer as well. Since they had no access to communications, the three of them were forced to hike through the wilderness to reach a Barrayaran weapons cache. When they arrived, the cache was occupied by Vorkosigan's subordinates. Vorkosigan regained control of his forces and captured some of the mutineers, although others escaped into the jungle. Naismith was transferred aboard Vorkosigan's ship, the General Vorkraft, and made a prisoner of war. Meanwhile, her own crew went back to the planet to look for her and found Lieutenant Radnov, the chief mutineer. Working with Radnov, a team of Betans smuggled themselves aboard the General Vorkraft. While Radnov tried to seize the ship, they freed Naismith. The Escobar War Aral and Cordelia later crossed paths again during the war precipitated by Barrayar's abortive attempt to invade Escobar, into which Beta Colony was brought as an ally of Escobar. Cordelia received a promotion to captain, and transferred to the Betan military the Betan Expeditionary Force. She was captured along with her crew after she successfully broke the Barrayaran blockade, allowing vital military supplies and weapons to reach the Escobarans, instrumental in their turning back the invading Barrayaran forces. During her time as a military prisoner she was brought to the attention of Ges Vorruyter, a high-ranking commander of the Barrayaran forces and a notable sadist and pervert who enjoyed tormenting and raping female captives. She was spared a violent rape at the directives of Vorruyter when Sergeant Bothari rejected his orders and killed him by slicing his throat. Later, upon the conclusion of the war, many of her compatriots and allies believed that she was the heroine who slew Vorruyter, earning her a brief status as a heroic celebrity on Beta Colony. However, her favorable opinion of Aral Vorkosigan, protestations of his honor and integrity and later her profession of love for him, quickly earned her the suspicions of her government, who believed that she had been psychologically conditioned and brainwashed to serve as a Barrayaran deep-cover mole, using the supposedly false love affair as a means of transmitting intelligence to Barrayar. After several attempts to remedy this non-existent psychological tampering, including being drugged against her will, and being told that her mental state would prevent her from resuming her command, Cordelia fled to Barrayar, and became Aral's wife, and thus Lady Cordelia Vorkosigan, only to learn that the retired soldier she thought she was marrying was to be pressed into government service as the new Regent of Barrayar upon the death of the elderly and gravely ill Emperor Ezar Vorbarra. Upon her husband's appointment, she was to be titled Regent-Consort. As Lady Vorkosigan and Regent-Consort Upon the death of Emperor Ezar, a period of political instability ensued, replete with assassination attempts on both Cordelia and her husband, the new Regent. While pregnant, Cordelia was present at a soltoxin poison-gas attack on her husband by political terrorists. While both Cordelia and Aral were given the antidote, the antidote would have disastrous affects on her unborn child. Both were rendered infertile by the poison. The political instability flared into full scale insurrection when Count Vidal Vordarian and his conservative Vor allies mounted a coup d'etat and seized the Imperial Residence in the hopes of apprehending both the child-Emperor Gregor and his mother Princess Kareen, whom Vordarian hoped to marry and seize the throne. The ensuing tumult became known as the War of Vordarian's Pretendership, in which Gregor was rescued from the palace by loyalists and Princess Kareen was killed. Count Vordarian was also killed by beheading during an attempt by Cordelia and her allies Sergeant Bothari and Ludmilla Droushnakovi) to break into the Imperial Residence to rescue her gestating fetus, now transferred to a uterine replicator due to the damage from the soltoxin gas' antidote. The uterine replicator had been housed in the residence, and in danger of failure due to neglect when the residence was occupied by Vordarian's forces. Cordelia become known as the woman who executed Vidal Vordarian and presented his severed head to her husband and his faction at Tanery base, as well as to the partisans of Count Vordarian who were present to negotiate a settlement, thus bringing the insurrection to an end. This incident earned her no small degree of awe and respect from the military-minded Vor caste, all the more unique due to her being a woman. In addition to Aral's role as Regent and Cordelia's affiliated social position as Regent-Consort, Aral and Cordelia were appointed the distinct honor of being the legal guardians of the child-emperor Gregor, and Cordelia was given essentially a guiding role over his formative years and education, placing her in an enormously powerful position to mold the emperor's political and social attitudes and thus affect Barrayar's future as a whole. The full repercussions of her new role went almost entirely unnoticed by the Council of Counts and the more conservative elements of Barrayaran society. The chief initial reason that Cordelia did not have any more children was not due to the inability to procreate (with Betan medicine, functioning cells were all that were required to reproduce), but any healthy children would weaken Miles' status (and endanger his life) in his family due to his deformity. Mother of Miles and Mark Vorkosigan As a result of the soltoxin antidote given to her, her child, Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, suffered severe physical deformities which were partially ameliorated by additional treatment received in the uterine replicator; her father-in-law, Count Piotr Vorkosigan refused to allow the deformed child to use his name. Instead, he was named Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, after Cordelia's own father. Cordelia and Aral intentionally had only one child, their son Miles. They later discovered that a clone of their son Miles, whom Miles named Mark Pierre Vorkosigan, had been created without their knowledge. While his legal status as a Vorkosigan was questionable on Barrayar, Cordelia unquestionably accepted him as her son. She endorsed him openly to the rest of Barrayaran society, buffered his culture shock to Barrayar, bought him a ship to use to find Miles, and even helped his love life by acting as a go-between for him, his girlfriend Kareen Koudelka, and Kareen's parents. As Countess Vorkosigan and Vicereine of Sergyar Upon Count Piotr's death, she became Countess Vorkosigan. Later, long after Emperor Gregor achieved his majority, Aral was named Viceroy of Sergyar. Cordelia became Vicereine Countess Vorkosigan. Their new positions required them to move to Sergyar to assume its governance and settlement. Ideology and Policies Cordelia maintains an independent and assertive front, being a full partner to Aral. This is a bit disconcerting to Barrayaran society, where women are just barely beginning looking beyond being wives and mothers. Because she is known as a Betan emigrant, her unique status as a female military hero is/was vaguely ignored by Vor society, partially due to her conscious decision to be apolitical and remain out of the spotlight, initially bending her energies to rearing both her own son (Miles) and Gregor. She heartily encourages imports of civilized thinking and goods that allows more freedom and independence for the people of Barrayar; uterine replicators in particular. As Countess Vorkosigan, she was the architect of a large-scale scholarship program, making galactic standard educations in medicine and science available to Barrayaran students with promise, and not just those born Vor. Personal Appearance and Style :She ran her hands over her red hair, parted in the middle and held away from her face by two enameled combs, and flopped it over her shoulders to curl loosely halfway down her back. Her grey eyes stared back at her from the pale face in the mirror. Nose a little too bony, chin a shade too long, but certainly a servicable face, good for all practical purposes. - Barrayar Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan is tall woman, with roan-red hair leavened with gray, that she wears parted in the center and long in the back (in her youth, her hair was a coppery red) and 'sea grey' eyes. Although not accounted a great beauty, with her face having a nose a bit too bold, an a jawline a bit too strong, she is nonetheless an attractive woman. She wears what would be deemed appropriate wear for a Vor-class matron, long flowing skirts and tailored bolero style jackets, but will slip into her Betan Astronomical Survey fatigues in private for comfort and nostalgia. Early in her marriage and new to her status as Lady Vorkosigan, she relied upon Lady Alys Vorpatril's expertise in Barrayaran fashions and etiquette, as to not socially embarrass her husband to his political foes. Cordelia also has a psychological quirk of stuttering under severe duress. It is unknown whether she still suffers from the tic, as she has rarely been under serious distress since her days as a resident of Beta Colony. Notes and references External links * Category:Vorkosigan family Category:Betans